Devs: Any Updates?
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We're in the middle of June now. Originally you guys were thinking March or April. We're past the 1.5year marker now since power was announced.
Have there been any updates on power creeps?
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I can see your frustration here, and I fully admit and agree that this feature is very desired for many players. We too look forward to implementing it as soon as possible. However, a lot of new players start playing right now, and we hear a lot of complaints about their bad initial experience regarding poor game optimization. Screeps is growing incredibly (and unexpectedly - this is why March/April deadline hasn't been met) fast, and performance is our #1 priority now (see our optimizations plans), since providing stable game experience for all players seems to be more important than introducing new major features. We'll do our best to get back to power creeps right after we solve the performance issues.
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+1 Artem
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The frustration isn't just over the fact that it's desired. It's over the fact that for 18 months now people have been building code and optimizing for power mining and power is literally useless at the moment. It basically means everyone on the power leaderboard has wasted their time.
Regardless, you've just lost one of your oldest players due to this issue.
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When you express your complaints about the timeframe, please keep in mind that Screeps managed to become a full-time project for me only in autumn 2016 after Steam launch... right away with huge amount of tasks regarding server-side optimizations due to Steam players influx, which is still the case. Don't you agree that we have no right to start working on power creeps while the tick duration is 5s already and counting?
I can fully understand that Hernanduer has already discovered all gameplay features during his years of playing and may be willing to take some break until new major feature is released. We'll be happy to notify all old players by email when new features are out.
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I just think that, going forward, you should avoid introducing "half features" such a power until you have the full roadmap laid out to make them work.
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Actually, I don't think that power is a "half-feature". You know, we've been thinking about some fun concept of gathering scores in neutral highway rooms that would be indicated only as a number in your account way before we came up with an idea of power creeps. Coding power banks farming algorithms is a fun programming challenge on its own, and thinking of it as a "waste of time" is the same as thinking of playing Screeps as a waste of time. After all, why would you waste your time to raise that GCL number in your account?
Farming and using power are two different coding challenges, and we have implemented the former in full, while temporary postponed the latter due to its incredible gameplay complexity.
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People raise their GCL because it gets them more CPU and rooms. It has a strategic purpose.
If people wanted coding challenges they'd go to CodeWars or something similar. People play this game because the coding challenges actually benefit them over time.
I'm pretty sure if you told people that power creeps were never going to happen everyone would turn off power mining, because there would be no point to it.
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People keep investing into creeps clocks, ramparts LCD screens, and huge art projects. Screeps is a sandbox game, and strategic purposes and benefits are not the only motivation here.
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I do agree with Artem that the power "half feature" is still a great one to have. It provides an interesting end game mechanic to play with. The power rankings are fun to aim for and gradual introduction of new functionality is definitely a smart approach towards the game's development.
Realistically though, looking at the development path of the past year, it feels the devs priorities were good enough. There wasn't anything I can point to that was not more important than power creeps. Nothing that should have been postponed in favor of focusing on this subject.
CPU stability and game scalability are also a more significant bridge to cross then the introduction of a new endgame mechanic that only applies to a very small group of players.
The only thing that we could ask for is that the devs work more/harder, but that's not exactly a fair request. Artem, what are you spending so much time on the forums for? Get to work!
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I think what a lot of people are upset about (at least this is my case) is that we feel we are being left out of the loop. This is the first place that I have seen anything mentioned about the focus being moved away from power creeps. It was my understanding that for the past 2+ months power creeps were the main focus of development. Most of us were expecting to be using power creeps for a while now and in preparation of that many players focuses have shifted away from GCL and toward gathering/processing power. I think what myself and at least some others are frustrated about is that we were never informed that power creeps were going to be delayed much less delayed so significantly. I think most of us in the community understand the need to switch focus towards things like optimizations, working in the programming industry I'm sure most of us have done this at least a few times throughout our careers. However at least in my job if I gave my boss a road map for a new feature, and then a month and a half after that feature was scheduled to be released I then told him that I had switched priorities a while ago and just never told him that the feature is being pushed 6 months back. I would probably be in a lot of trouble.
What I'm getting at here is that whats done in the past is past, but in the future I feel it would go a long way with the community if we were better informed of the situation. I can't imagine that it was just 2 days ago when the dev team decided that optimizations need to be the #1 priority. While screeps is a sandbox game there are a lot of us who do play it as a strategy game and I think most of us understand the need for changing priorities, but we would like to be informed so that we too have the option of changing priorities.
